Romania are a force when it comes to Eurovision, with one of the strongest records of qualifications into the final. They’ve been in the Top 5 three times, but lately have found themselves consistently mid-table, so it’s up to The Humans to give the nation another Top 10 result but is their entry Goodbye strong enough to do that?
It was such a long winded national final from Romania this year, with a total of 60 acts competing, with unfortunately only a small percentage of songs with Eurovision potential. Once the songs were sifted through by the jury, we were left with 15 acts competing in the final show, with The Humans triumphing with the televote.
I can totally see why the Romanian public landed on this entry, and unexpectedly this has become one of my favourites to qualify. Interestingly, with such a good qualification streak and such widespread support at Eurovision, this entry has stayed under the radar, and I believe totally underrated in this lead up to the contest. I enjoy that the song builds really organically over the three minutes, and you can tell from the first verse of the song that it’s going to build into something epic. It takes a minute or so before we get the rock portion of the song, but the ballad style sections of the song mesh really well with the rock sound.
Although it hasn’t had much attention from the Eurovision community, I think pending on the stage performance, this will catch the attention of fans – and hopefully for the right reasons. Judging off the national final performance, I think her vocals were quite strong but at certain times could have been more powerful. I think she comes into her element with the more ‘rock’ parts of the song, and I think backed up by a couple of strong backing artists, this could come across as something spectacular.
In terms of the actual stage performance, I think a song like this has a lot of potential avenues. They can play on the rock style of the song and have something a bit more traditionally rock, think MaNga, Minus One, Highway and so on, or they could create something theatrical playing on both the style and the content of the song. I think no matter how they stage it, it will lift the song considerably.
All aboard… the underrated train!
Being second in the running order probably isn’t the most ideal of spots, but I think considering this is in what many are considering the weaker of the semi-finals, Romania is a definite chance of reaching the final. I don’t want to confidently count it into the final, but I certainly don’t want to count it out, and I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see it reach the final, and if it does, I suspect another mid to low table result for Romania.
Our rating: 7.5/10
If you support Romania at Eurovision, make sure to vote for The Humans in our poll! Watch their official video below, and follow our Eurovision 2018 playlist on Spotify.
